Death

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

Both lovers have intimations of coming death—Romeo before he even arrives at the Capulet's party, and Juliet when she sees Romeo climbing from her window on his way to exile in Mantua. "Oh god, I have an ill-divining soul," she calls down to him. "Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, / as one dead in the bottom of a tomb" (3.5.54-56). In the most literal possible way, Juliet's drug-induced deathlike state foreshadows her own death. And the apothecary from whom Romeo buys the poison is described as looking like death—thin, starving, with hollow eyes. Romeo buys his suicide weapon from a man that symbolizes death.